


Torch

by rathernotmyname



Series: Fictober! 2020 [18]
Category: Busters Mal Heart
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Fictober! Day 18, Hurt No Comfort, The Author Regrets Nothing, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rathernotmyname/pseuds/rathernotmyname
Summary: He imagines himself taking a flaming stick and running through the forest with it, spreading enlightenment wherever he goes.
Relationships: Jonah & Roxy
Series: Fictober! 2020 [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050200
Kudos: 1





	Torch

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note:  
> I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING HOSTED OR REPOSTED ON ANY UNOFFICIAL APPS OR WEBSITES OTHER THAN ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN WITHOUT MY APPROVAL, PARTICULARLY APPS WITH AD REVENUE AND SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES.

„Papi,“ Roxy chants, halfway absorbed in the game she‘s playing with one of her favorite plushies, “Papi, Papi, Papi!”

Jonah leans over from where he sits perched on the kitchen counter, waiting for the potatoes to boil.

“What is it, baby girl? What is it?”

“Tigah gotta wash,” his daughter proclaims seriously, showing him her plush tiger. Its nose is stained with something that looks dangerously similar to hot chocolate.

“Oh no. How did Tiger get so dirty? Did you see it? What happened?”

“He w’s hungry,” Roxy explains, shaking her little head in exasperation and sighing loudly like her mother does sometimes. 

“Oh, I know that feeling. Sometimes I want to stick my whole face into the oatmeal because it’s so yummy when your Mommy makes it. Maybe that’s what happened to Tiger?”

She giggles, whole body tipping over backwards before Jonah quickly stretches out an arm to keep her from falling onto the hard tiles. At the touch, she quickly comes back to the topic at hand.

“No, Papi!” she admonishes him, frowning sternly and wagging her tiny index finger at him. “Spoon!”

“Of course, you’re right. I have to stick the spoon in the outmeal, not my face. I’m so silly, aren’t I?”

“Silly Papi,” Roxy agrees. 

Jonah smiles and gently kisses her head. The potatoes boil over.

The bubbling of the boiling water sounds a little like the bullets that flew through the woods a few minutes ago. The memory seems to pale in front of his eyes, already feeling like it was a few hundred years ago.

He tries and succeeds to hold back tears, wishing with the part of his heart that hasn’t shriveled and died already that dirty stuffed animals were still his only worry, except for mind-crushing weariness, weird guests and his boss.

The bullet wound in the back of his thigh aches fiercely as he makes to stand up and search the vicinity of his little cavern for any unwelcome guests with guns and police sirens. 

He still has a shotgun lying around somewhere, hidden behind a bush, but the blood that makes his pants stick to his skin ruin his desire to get it out. Besides, he’s not here to kill anyone (even thinking the sentence makes his heart scream in unimaginable pain) even if nobody believes him. Even if he didn’t believe himself on some occasions.

(Lately, those occasions have been coming on closer than ever, but it will be resolved in not too much time. The inversion is coming.)

He returns to his hideout and lies down next to his puny fire, imagining himself taking a flaming stick and running through the forest with it, spreading enlightenment wherever he goes.

His own torch of wisdom, so to say. 

The noise picks up suddenly in the morning, when the doubt in him is burned out again and he’s stiff and a little blue from the cold. 

The cops babble through a megaphone about him being surrounded and coming out with his hands in the air and so on and so forth, while the pot of potatoes boils in his mind boils over again and again, on an endless loop that gives him more trouble than the flashing blue lights and people everywhere.

He limps his way to the opening of his cavern and thinks a little about his nickname the media and radio hosts granted him with. Buster. Would Marty have married him with such a boring name? It’s a brief thought that goes nowhere, but it feels better to think about such a triviality than about everything else that looms over his head, over all of their heads.

As the bullets start flying around him he does nothing. He doesn’t run, he doesn’t hide, he just waits.

In his mind, he sees Roxy’s reproachful little finger wagging in the air, hears her exclaiming _‘silly Papi’,_ and that minuscule, desperate part of his heart can’t help but agree.

**Author's Note:**

> Busters Mal Heart is it's own warning. If you haven't seen the movie, I can imagine the question marks in your eyes very well xD  
> (Also a character I've never written before!)  
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
